stefansson-wrangel-09-28-067

156-G

integrity and ability, the reputations of the dead had no defense
except in the honesty and discretion of Mr. Noice. Under those cir-
cumstances he did and said the following things, among others:

Mr. Noice erased certain paragraphs of Knight's diary (the
only diary) so thoroughly that all but one of the erasures have so
far remained undeciphered. He then said to several people in Nome,
Toronto, New York and doubtless elsewhere that he had erased these
paragraphs because they contained evidence disgraceful to Knight him-
self and to the other men. He must have known that these statements
of his would circulate widely, as they have done, and that those
who heard them would imagine all sorts of disgusting things, each
according to his bent. But on the assumption that the paragraphs
which Mr. Noice erased were in tenor similar to the ones he tore out
and has since been forced to return, we now know with fair certainty
that the erased paragraphs originally showed nothing worse than
what might be called a "mid-Victorian" or perhaps a "puritanical"
attitude of the four men towards the one woman in their carefulness
to avoid alike improprieties and the appearance of any.

Repeatedly speaking of Lorne Knight as his "trail mate"
and "pal," Mr. Noice gives in the newspaper story constantly the
impression that he is trying to minimize and hide the incompetence
of Knight and his companions. But forgetting this benevolent
reticence now and then, he refers to Lorne Knight in one place as
"human driftwood" and says in another place that Knight "did not
have the mental equipment" to enable him to look after himself or
to be helpful in saving others. These would be hard words to use
of a dead man, even if they had been as true as they are false -
and especially ungenerous words to use while exploiting and with-
holding from others that man's only written record.